


of little sisters and promises made

by ygrittebardots



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Backstory, Childhood, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 09:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2020122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ygrittebardots/pseuds/ygrittebardots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A normal day in Winterfell becomes a voyage of memory when Ned encounters a tender moment between his bastard son and youngest daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of little sisters and promises made

**Author's Note:**

> From a Tumblr prompt by nenesauriorex: Ned reminisces about Lyanna while he sees Arya and Jon playing and/or comforting each other. Please and thank you.
> 
> I believe the events in this story canonically take place when Jon is much younger, but I tweaked the timeline for my own purposes.

Bran’s on the roof again.

There seems to be precious little time these days when Bran _isn’t_ on the roof, but while Ned has acknowledged that this is a battle he will lose - and indeed he acknowledged this years ago, when it first became commonplace to locate his then-youngest son perched on the tallest library shelf or in the stable rafters - Catelyn hasn’t. And when it comes to his wife, Ned learned long ago it was best to pick his battles.

“Come, then, young ser,” he says, head and torso leaned out of Robb’s window and twisted around to get a clear view of Bran, sitting some distance higher on the slanted tower roof. “It’s time to join Jory in the yard.”

Bran bites his bottom lip at Ned’s appearance. Even at the young age of five, he knows that he’ll have to heed his lord father, that it won’t do to put him off the way he has everyone else that’s tried to coax him inside. All the same, he says, “But it’s so beautiful up here, Father. Look, you can see all the way to Bear Island!”

You can’t, in fact, but Ned doesn’t mention this.

“Ah, I see. So you’d sooner be a bird than a knight.”

“No!” shouts Bran quickly, scrambling to get his feet under him. “I’m going to be captain of the Kingsguard before I’m twenty!”

Ned catches him around the waist as he descends and lands him on his feet safely inside the chamber. He kneels, coming to eye level with the young boy.

“Swordplay waits for no knight with such ambition,” he tells his son, ignoring Robb’s stifled laughter next to him. “And you will heed your lady mother, your brother, and Maester Luwin in the future.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Good lad.”

Ned leaves the chamber with his sons, then watches as they race down the corridor and out of sight towards the training yard. With Jon abed, these past few weeks have seen the beginning of Bran’s weapons training. Bran likes training, delights in his little wooden sword, but his second son is so often with his head in the clouds that sometimes Ned wonders whether he will one day be a more natural scholar than warrior, despite his proclaimed ambitions.

 _Third son_ , Ned mentally corrects himself. _Third._

It’s a lie he’s told so often and so well that he rarely stumbles over it, even to himself. Twelve years of claiming Lyanna’s boy as his own sometimes makes him forget the truth of it, that the boy should never have been nameless, with a loving mother and the name Stark at the least. That in another world, he would have been a prince, not the butt of jokes or a stain on a reputation, and his lady aunt would have been saved a lifetime of insult.

The pox had come swift and deadly, and all though this past fortnight, Ned had been so afraid that all the years of lies had been for naught.

He had imagined it more than once in the night when he could not sleep - Jon Snow, not yet twelve years old and fresh in the ground, and the truth would come spilling out. To Cat, to the maester, to Robb, who had loved the boy as a brother. That Jon had been all that remained of Lyanna Stark, and now they were both truly gone. Once, in the early hours of the morning, these visions had come to him so vividly that Ned became convinced what he imagined had come to pass. He’d made it to Jon’s chamber as quickly as he could, and found a sight he could not have thought of in his wildest imaginings. Jon’s black hair, damp with sweat, curled between Cat’s fingers as his head lay in her lap. A near-finished prayer wheel sat abandoned in the chair next to the bed. Cat had looked up upon his entrance, and kept his gaze steady in hers.

“His fever is broken, my lord,” she had said evenly. “Maester Luwin says he will live.”

That had been three days ago. They have not spoken of it since.

The door of Jon’s chamber is slightly ajar as he approaches it, soft voices spilling out, and that gives him pause. Then he hears a girlish shriek of laughter, and he smiles. Maester Luwin has Jon on bedrest as he recovers, and promises that exposure to him is no longer a threat to the young ones, yet Cat has expressly forbid all the children save Sansa from visiting him. Sansa - who already had the pox two years ago - and Jon have never been close, and in a moment Ned knows that Arya has once again taken her mother’s strict instruction as a loose guideline.

What Ned sees when he approaches warms his heart. Jon, who for all his recovered strength and renewed color is still quite weak, nested under the piles of quilts and furs, Arya in her mudstained green dress tucked next to him. They don’t seem to be having a real conversation at all, instead making hideous faces and nonsense sounds at one another that have them each in turn in fits of giggles. 

Ned is reminded very suddenly of two other children who used to roam these halls, a boy and his little sister with matching grey eyes and unruly dark hair that Lyarra Stark could never quite tame. He had not been an unhappy child, but Ned had ever been quiet in a way his siblings hadn’t, never seeing the need to draw attention to himself the way Brandon did. It’s easy in this way to convince himself that Jon is in truth his son, he sees so much of himself in him. And when he sees the easy smiles Arya coaxes from him the way no one else seems capable of, Ned wonders how she is his and not Lyanna reborn.

“I’m glad you’re well again, Jon,” he hears his daughter say. “Theon said you were going to die.”

There’s a smacking noise and a squeal of protest as Jon lands a huge kiss on Arya’s cheek. “Theon,” he says, “is a stupid squid who doesn’t know anything. When I die, I’ll be taking the dragon I’m battling with me.”

“I don’t want you to die,” she says, very small, and Ned can hear a crack in her voice that makes his heart break. He wants to go to her, scoop her up in his arms, but this is not his moment. “No one else loves me like you.”

“That isn’t true,” Jon reassures her, stroking her hair. “Father does. And your lady mother. And Robb and Bran, even Sansa in her own - ”

“But no one _understands_ me the way you do,” Arya protests, her voice a little higher, a little more panicked. “Robb never wants me to ride with him, and Sansa and Jeyne think I’m stupid because all my stitches are wrong and I won't play Come Into My Castle with them, and Mother hates me because I’m not Sansa and I don’t know what I’d do if you died because everyone else is just awful.”

Arya is not one for hysterics, but Ned can hear the wobbling of her voice and knows she’s close to tears. And still, he finds himself frozen in place.

“Arya - ”

“Promise me you won’t die,” Arya commands, sitting up, the authority in her voice a thin veil over the straining. “Not ever. Promise me, Jon.”

And for the smallest fraction of a moment, Ned feels his heart stop, _Promise me, Ned_ echoing through the years.

“Oh, little sister,” Jon says, taking her tiny hands in his and holding them to his chest. “No man can promise that. But I will promise you one thing.”

“What?” she asks, her voice wavering.

“It will not be today, nor for many years to come.”


End file.
